Kathryn Le Veque (29 page)

Liam scurries back from Benedict’s rage. I huddle into my bedroll.

Benedict turns from Tom. He seizes Geoff, like a cat shaking a
trem
- bling, torn rat. “Goddam you, my wife
is
pure,
ah’ll
have you know— pure as the
feckin
’
driven snow!”

Benedict whispers thickly as blood drips down Geoff’s face. “Say
it to me. Say it!”

Geoff’s voice shakes. “Aye,
Bene
. Sophia
is pure.”

Benedict drops him to the snow. The anger washes out of him as
rap- idly as it came. He seems spent now, exhausted by his rage.

Bene
is not
a man familiar with emotion—he is the one who coldly calculates the odds. I
have seen him in the village, running games of chance against the day of
harvest—the next throw of dice, the next shot by a bow. He gives the winners
their take without feeling, and takes the loser’s coins without a care. But
Benedict bet awry when he married Sophia. He wooed her knowing she had been a
Jew, thinking her family had gold buried.

In the end, there was no gold, no dowry, nothing for him except
the big weaving house that just burned to the ground and Sophia’s ever-wan-
dering
eye. She seeks for something everywhere—something
Benedict can’t, or won’t, give her.

There is
an emptiness
in her heart that
can never be filled, a bottom- less longing that causes her to hunger for
affection and devour every scrap of kindness. Whatever you give her is never
enough.

She has even seized on me at times—
mute
Mear
—for conversation. For when she seizes me, I touch her
hand, I look into her eyes, I watch her face,
I
smile
when she speaks. And Benedict never does these small things.

Now
Bene
talks quietly, his voice
hoarse. “
Tha
must see
,
these
lads were not on a journey. They had naught for the open road.
My boy
—”
Benedict’s voice breaks.

A bird calls, distant and wounded.
The woods are still as death. Quick steam huffs in and out of
Geoff’s open mouth.

Hob steps forward.
“Enough of this shite.
Look to the campsite—we must be ready for the night.”

And with that, the dangerous moment seems past. We gather wood and
help Tom build his fire. As I pick up spare twigs and dried bracken, I wonder
how far our sounds penetrate into the black forest, and how far our shouts echo
along the White Road. Anyone approaching along the road could find us here.

Supper is roasted pork we brought from the village, and warmed
snow. After we have licked our fingers clean, we edge closer to the fire, heads
cocked toward the whispering wind as it brushes the treetops. Night birds
warble, and small creatures rustle in the snow.

Benedict digs in the straw of the cart and brings out a half cask
of cider. Tom and
Bene
guzzle long before they share
with the rest of us. The apples were squeezed in the summer and fermented all
the fall. I
gulp a
mouthful, and the taste of it is bright and bitter on my tongue. My head goes
dizzy after a single swallow.

Hob has the knife out that he used to carve our dinner meat. He
passes the cider and doesn’t take a sip. Instead, he painstakingly strokes a
whetstone across the edge of his blade. “The road tomorrow could be dangerous.
Bandits and the like.”

The cider goes around the circle again, and we lean closer to hear
Hob speak again. “We must stick together, that’s our only hope. We will get to
the
monastery,
seek the Abbot’s protection, demand
justice for our loss.”

Hob’s knife scrapes harshly on the stone. “We few from the village
are nothing in the greater world, you understand. We could be taken for
chattel, for labor, even for killing sport.”

“Aye,” Tom agrees, his words already blurred by drink. “
Captur’d
by witches.”

Liam laughs aloud. “Oh, Tom, if you’re
fear’d
of witches, you can sleep in my bed, with smelly
ol
’
Mear
.” The other men guffaw, but Tom continues, the cider
giving him a pompous certainty.

“They say if you creep along the right valley in the dead o’
night, ’round the dark o’ the moon, you’ll hear
them
witches a-
singin
’ an’ a-
chantin
’.”

Yet this time when he speaks, there is something in his tone that
gives us pause. There are some who believe to speak of a thing is to summon it
into the world, and Tom speaks with such conviction. We become so quiet that
the loudest noise is the sizzle of burning tree sap.

The darkness around us presses down, as if to listen. The music of
the wind rises and falls with the swirls of the snow, the creaking of the sea
of branches in the darkness above us. Liam takes a long swallow of cider, and
even the sound of it splashing in the cask unnerves me.

“Ah think there was more than one of them witches in our village.
Ah saw them once, dancing, deep in the woods,” says Geoff. He pushes the words
out carefully, drink slowing his speech.

“There was one we know for sure,” says Benedict. He takes the
cider from Liam and spreads his hands apart, to make his point. “She was a
strange woman—kept herself apart.”

“Nell,” says Cole. “That was her name.” And as he speaks, there is
a loud and distant moan, one tree moving against another. I can’t tell how far
away the sound is, or which direction it comes from. Sound travels strangely in
the
wildland
.

“You hear that?” Geoff says. His eyes gleam in the light of the
coals. His whisper is coarsened by fear. “What is it?”

Eventually the wind dies, and young Cole goes into the bushes to
drop his pants. He returns and wipes his hands with dead leaves.

“There’s someone following, on the hillside, on the open road
behind,” says Cole. Geoff turns from the fire and climbs up onto a stone, to
see our
backtrail
.

“Whoever follows is not from our village!” Benedict says. “Ah
think they might be—”

“There’s no one behind us,” Hob says shortly. “You all are
pie-eyed drunks. Go to bed.” Hob spits on his whetstone and keeps sharpening
his knife, louder now.

Yet one by one, each of us steps away from the brightness of the
flames and looks up at the hillside where the faint track winds back and forth.

“Look,” says Tom. “The moon’s got a
fairie
circle ’round it.”

All of us turn our eyes higher, to see the three-quarter moon
floating in a fog-flecked winter sky—glimmering around that uneven globe, an
ethereal silver circle.

“More snow coming tonight, that means,” says Liam.
“A heavy fall of snow.”

“Aye,” Benedict agrees. “The new snow will cover our tracks, but
it won’t cover our cart. If there’s someone coming, we should get ready for a
fight,
dontcha
think?”

“Nah, there’s no one there,” Hob repeats calmly. “Who would be out
from the village, in the woods?” Bright sparks shoot out as Hob rasps hard at
his blade.

I look back at the dying fire. Cole has not moved with the rest of
us to gaze up at the moon overhead, at the clouds rapidly moving in. Instead,
he still scans the hillside, his mouth nervous and twitching,
firelight
flickering across his anxious face as he pulls
aside his hood. In the faint light, I discern a faint burn on his neck,
something red and unhealed, a touch of ash and pain. I see a tremble in his
fingers, wide fear in his eyes.

And it comes to me that Cole knows of that night. It beats in me,
in my blood.

Cole knows.

CHAPTER 5

Frost crackles on the sheepskin as I push it away, white plumes of
breath rising in the faint light. For years, I have arisen at Lauds, before
dawn: in this hour, the deep darkness of the sky is touched with
royal blue.


The landscape has changed in the night. A vast shroud of snow
drowns
every feature,
the unceasing tide sweeping over the land, covering the path and the campsite.

Under the new snow, our campsites are hidden, like the holes of
ver
- min, buried among the rocks and drifts. Above us now,
the high hill is peaked with an overhang of snow that curves like a butcher’s
blade above our hollow.

I move toward the cart and sweep away the fresh snowflakes that
lie on my son and his friends. And there, in the morning light, I see a flash
of silver that catches the sunlight—the chain on my son’s neck glimmer-
ing
from the straw.

Drawn by that brightness, by the need to see his face, I push
aside the straw. I pull aside the sackcloth that covers the boys, and I fumble
at the rope tied across the cart.

Then a shiver runs up my spine. For the rope is looped with that
strange triple knot tied fast across a half hitch. It is the same knot that was
tied across the door of the Benedict’s house. It was this knot that killed him.

The one who tied this knot might be here. He must be traveling as
one of our company.
Who?

My fingers tremble, but I slide the curving snake of that triple
knot apart. I turn the bodies of our boys, blackened and charred. And here, on
this one
neck,
is the silver chain that marks my son.

I touch the chain, and then I see a new surprise. Strung on its
slen
- der length is the ring I told Christian he must never
take from our little house. I had noticed the chain, but I had not seen the
ring. Christian took an heirloom of our house—he is wearing that great token of
his father’s love.

When I left Canterbury Abbey, I took with me everything my lover
had given me, most importantly this ring. I took it from the abbey for my
newborn son to have when he was grown.

At the last new moon, I told Christian of it, finally, when he had
nearly reached the age of ten. I unearthed it from the small birch box in which
it had been hidden all those years, and I showed it to him. The ring was his by
heritage, the only token of his father I still bore.

My heart tells me the truth, but I do not want to hear it—
Christian
took the ring from our croft because he would not return. He meant to leave our
village forever.

A cry comes up my throat: I choke it off unvoiced.

Now I wonder if it was right of me to stay hidden in the village
all those years, wanting to protect my son from the world, sheltering under
Salvius’s
gentle care. For all those years, I had not even
taken a daylong sojourn to discover if the Earl or Edward won their clandestine
struggle, or if any knew of Christian’s birth.

Admittedly, my boy’s life in Duns had not been much. He grew
strong from work, he learned the secret lessons that I taught, but he couldn’t
claim what was his by birthright.

He would have gone to claim this birthright.
Oh, my
son—Christian.

Now perhaps in death, Cristian’s true name has been taken from the
world. But I still live, I still breath, I still know.

I unfasten Christian’s chain and remove the ring. I place it
ever-so- carefully on my own small chain, close to my heart. Then I refasten
his own silver links around his neck, letting him keep one of his last
pos
- sessions. I will give him the silver chain, even when
he is buried in the ground.

Yet I grip the ring in my hand, my heart pounding. I must hold
this tight. It is the last sign of my past, the last token of who I once was.

**

Our fire is almost out now, the large heap of wood we gathered the
day before nearly devoured. The men hardly stir in their sleep, the sound of
their breathing deep with the residue of drink. The rotten aftertaste of cider
is still in my mouth as well.

But I am sober this dawn, and cold, so I pile dead bracken and
fresh wood on the fire. The bracken smokes, and we need more firewood, so I
push my way through the snow toward the trees.

My thoughts turn to my companions. I have seen much through my ten
years living with them, but now it seems I may not know the truth of these men.
Any story is an ocean whose tide begins in a place I can’t know, and my life is
but a moment in that flood, my part in it only a
mote
in the flow.

Before I came to this village, these men and their families had a
long history. They had generations to build up resentments and grudges, and
stories that trickled down through the years, which allowed them to know each
other in ways I will never know. For my village—generations in the building—it
all disappeared when I was a child, wiped out by the
plague,
the last remnants of my people scattered and lost.

What do I really know of these men from
the village of Duns?
As I stagger through the drifts, the
threads of logic weave together into suppositions, accusations.

Geoff did it.
That small man with the dark and gnomish
face, the uncertain expression.
He was a weak
boy, the butt of jokes when he was a child. Even now Geoff cannot shake the
fear that he is still mocked behind his back. There were reasons for the
teasing. That is an old history, full of rot and pain, and I know but half of
it.

What if Geoff took his pleasure with boys, just as his syphilitic
father before him? Could he have tied the house shut, set the fire, and burned
them to their deaths? What if Geoff accuses Benedict to conceal his own crimes?

I come back down the hill with an armful of wood. The fire
smolders hot with dry twigs. Smoke rises. Dawn strokes the horizon with an edge
of steaming brightness.

I think of the several fires in our village: who lit those?
And why?
And then, why would the boys gather together?
Perhaps to speak of
their
fear of Geoff?
But who would be afraid of that man? He is small and
frail and he and I are all too often discarded from manly work, because of our
light frames.

Maybe it’s Liam. He told Geoff he hides a
crime.
I spend my time serving
Salvius’s
smithy and doing what I can to curry favor with
Benedict, not with such a poor woodsman. Despite this, I thought I knew Liam
well, with his
fox-like
face and his fringe of red
hair, and always he seeks to ally with me.

They still call Liam “young ’un,” and it is not because he is
particu
-
larly
young—he is older
than half the men. They call him that because he came to this village a mere
fifteen years ago, marrying into the
vil
-
lage
. His father and his grandfather and generations before
him did not live here. And I imagine the men do not trust him, because he is still
an outsider.

What would Liam do in fear of his own life?

And what of Tom’s vision?
Tom is an unlikely prophet, with his wide- set, staring eyes, his
mad speech and his great oxen muscles. But what if, for once, Tom’s eyes had
seen
aright
?

What if there was indeed a Jew who wished
revenge for the killings fifty years ago?
Someone
who saw his family die and came back to put a blood- curse on our village for
the crimes of the past? There are still Jews concealed—what if one held a
grudge?

I shake my head. I do not believe it. Tom’s vision of Jews in the
night is but a faint and uneven sketch: there is no truth in his fantasy of
sacrifice and sorcery.

Then again, what do the men know of me? I am an old mystery to
them and an outsider as well, even after all these years. If someone dis-
covered my secrets, I would be the one accused. I am bound by silence, but that
would not prevent them burning me as a witch. I have dreamed that death far too
often, grinding my teeth in the fetid darkness of my little hutch.

Do they suspect? How long will it take for
the men to accuse me?
I wish again that
Salvius
was here. He has always upheld my manliness,
trusted my strength in gathering wood for his smithy.
Salvius
is always my truest friend, my first defender. There is no falsehood in him.

Liam and Geoff, though, they worry me. I shake my head.
Secrets and lies.

I trudge to the top of a hill, where the wood is dry. From the
forest, we are invisible.

Yet now I can see that our camp has been revealed to anyone who
travels on the open road. I have revealed it by making a smoky fire. From our
campsite, a black line of smoke rises tall from the hollow, a beacon against
the aurora light. I must get dry wood now, not wet, and damp the smoke.

Why were the boys together?
If the murder was aimed at the village, as some rude crime aimed
at all of us—or as some sacrifice to a pagan god— then someone would have had
to gather the boys together. They would not have gone willingly if they knew
the true purpose of their gathering.

Benedict says he had gathered them because he needed all their
nim
-
ble
, small fingers to move
the warp and woof. He had a great set of
weav
-
ings
due for delivery at Lincoln.

But could he have told a tale to us?
Bene
the
weaver is always jealous of Sophia, and always he seeks to hold her for his
own. His sunburned bald head always seems worried for her. And because he has
remained faithful to her—despite her many small betrayals and cheats on
him—that has made me respect bald
Bene
despite
myself
.

For there is much to dislike in Benedict.
He still conceals the fact of the boys’ intended departure from
the village. And I know for certain that they meant to travel away from us: the
truth is with the boys.

The chain around my son’s neck, and the
ring.
Liam’s son’s walk-
ing
stick.
Geoff’s son, who carved a pelican, took
that heirloom of their house with him.

It was a secret journey, to set out in the night—only Benedict
knew the truth of it. And like our travel now, I doubt anyone had a lord’s
bless-
ing
. Not them. Not us.

And even now Benedict does not tell the boys’ secret.

Hob, the dark-haired alderman, has some hold on Benedict, for
often I see
Bene’s
hands tremble with fear as he
looks at Hob.

Could Hob have tied that triple knot? Hob has always been our
leader in the village, but why now does he drive us forward with such fervor?
And why would Hob have any cause to burn them up in the night?

Cole knows.
If I gain his trust, if I find a way to worm my way into his
heart, he might tell me more of the truth. I know he saw something that night.

I kneel on the hillside to gather dry twigs. Something catches at
me, a distant sound. In this late morning, frost thickens on the wind; snow is
gusting down.

Already the new-fallen drifts are hardening under a crust of ice.

Yet that fearful promise of cold is not what brought me pause. I
wait, I listen. These hours are as silent and pallid as the inside of a
whitewashed tomb.

Someone moves in the camp. I look down. It is Cole, pissing in the
snow. Then he sees me, he finishes, and he strides slowly toward the hill on
which I crouch.

I push the fresh snowflakes out of my face and peer again at the
hori
-
zon
, squinting against the
faint dawn, my eyes tearing in the cold. There comes a faint sound, the cry of
a lost winter bird. Then I see them, a shape of men on horses.

The uncertainty in me resolves into a knot of fear in my belly, a
churn-
ing
mass of dark apprehension. I duck quickly
into the hollow, but I know it is too late. They have seen the smoke. They know
there is someone in this corner of the snowbound world, someone with fire and
with food.

Cole comes up into the trees, close enough to touch. I take his
shoulder and push him down into a small ravine so we cannot be seen. I look at
the distant figures, the moving dots of men on horses, growing visible even in
the scrim of falling snowflakes.

I point and show Cole with my hands how open we are to eyes on the
road, how vulnerable to bandits.

As I turn to slide back down the lee of the hill, Cole speaks: “We
must tell Hob.”

> > > > > > > > > > > >

THE STORY OF
SINFUL FOLK
CONTINUES in the new release
of the book from CAMPANILE BOOKS in JANUARY 2014.